Word: alcoholism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...patient treatment centers in the U.S. use a 28-day drying-out program developed in 1949 at Hazelden. For the first few days, staff help patients through the tremors and anxiety of withdrawal. From that point on, the emphasis is on counseling. The aims: dispel the alcoholic's self-delusions about drinking, drive home an understanding of alcohol's destructive properties, and make it clear that the only reasonable course is to stop drinking -- permanently. Some centers use Antabuse, a drug that induces vomiting and other symptoms if the patient has a drink. Schick Shadel, a program with hospitals...
...Dying of alcoholism normally takes years. But before a final, prolonged bout of uncontrolled drinking caused my physical collapse and led to treatment, there was no doubt I was well on my way. My appearance was shocking. I was about 20 lbs. underweight and malnourished, the result of giving up almost all forms of food except coffee, sugar and, of course, alcohol. I was in the early stages of delirium tremens, the DTs. I sometimes heard faint ringing noises in my ears and suffered unexpected waves of vertigo. I felt near constant pressure in my lower back and sides from...
...just fine" as a key phrase that encompassed my diseased physical and mental condition. At the nadir, my addiction to a chemical that was killing me was nearly complete. I knew that something was very wrong with me. I even knew I was an alcoholic, but I had long since come to believe there was nothing I could do about it. I had decided that it was perfectly appropriate -- just fine -- that I should die. In fact, I honestly hoped that * I would, sparing further grief for many people I loved. Dying, I thought, was the best thing I could...
...finds alcoholism more mysterious than the suffering alcoholic, and I was no exception. I had no idea why I was an alcoholic at all, though I should have: my father was one. But from his illness I had gained only a morbid fear of the substance, which lasted until I reached college. I would never touch the stuff. That prolonged abstinence while my adolescent peers experimented with liquor only made what happened to me more mystifying. I thought I could take alcohol or leave...
...ever start to drink at all? The short answer is that initially it made me feel better. Alcohol numbed my self-awareness, the same trick that it performs for nonalcoholic drinkers at cocktail parties. The difference is that normal drinkers dull their self-consciousness only slightly, the better to socialize. I very quickly tried to send all my thoughts and feelings about myself to oblivion. Psychologically, I was undoubtedly depressed when I began to overcome my well-founded but ill-understood fears about alcohol: my father died when I was a sophomore. For whatever reason, I spent the better part...